1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to enterprise application integration, and to a method for selective application of enterprise application integration practices to a business enterprise.
2. Background Art
In a business enterprise, it is common to use a number of individual software solutions, and a situation arises where multiple software applications must manage the same information. Without application integration, each system has its own data, and data for each system is manually updated to keep all systems in order.
Although a manual update approach may be successful in certain situations, this approach is tedious and may result in data inconsistencies across systems. Enterprise application integration (EAD attempts to address this problem.
EAI is an approach to integrating applications at some level, and results in more reusable information technology (IT) assets and a more agile application portfolio. The investment and return patterns of EAI-based integration solutions differ from traditional integration approaches and therefore they require a different planning approach. EAI typically requires more up front effort. The business case for EAI is that the return exceeds the investment, that is, that the EAI solution creates value.
The problem is that there are many EAI practices, and picking the right ones to apply to a given project may make the difference for both the project at hand and the EAI program in general. A particular problem occurs if EAI is applied too broadly, leading to over-engineered solutions.
For the foregoing reasons, there is a need for an approach where EAI practices are selectively applied only where their value exceeds their cost.